Gustave Moreau and the reinvention of history painting

Although Gustave Moreau remains associated with Decadence or Symbolism, in reality he was, above all, an innovative history painter. The analysis of Salon paintings from 1860 to 1869, together with their critical reception, shows how Moreau reinvented history painting. Rejecting the theatrical paradigm, he cultivated "contemplative immobility": instead of staging figures that interact in a historical drama, Moreau created immobile, allegorized, mythological figures. The exclusion of conventional narrative techniques, combined with the use of complex allegory at a time when the latter had become obsolete, rendered his paintings enigmatic. Moreau was thus able to endow history painting with the poetic indeterminacy of the polysemic symbol.